[cups] turning off fit-to-page [work-around]

[Jörg Thümmler]

Am 09.01.24 um 16:36 schrieb Gary Dale:
> On 2024-01-04 09:32, Gary Dale wrote:
>> I'm running Debian/Bookworm on an AMD64 server. I'm usually trying to 
>> print to a HP CP1215 colour laser printer.
>>
>> CUPS has been a nightmare for the past year, but I get around it a 
>> little by printing from the command line. My workstation can't seem to 
>> print to the server's printers anymore so I have been working around 
>> it by creating a PDF or image file and using lp to print from the server.
>>
>> However this doesn't work when I have a document that extends into the 
>> printer margins. Then lp shrinks the document to fit the margins, 
>> which is not what I want. I want the printer to crop at the margins so 
>> I get as much of the document as the printer allows without any 
>> alterations and without having to create a separate document for each 
>> printer I might use.
>>
>> This brought me to the barely documented option "fit-to-page" which 
>> (apparently) is turned on by default so that iOS users can air print 
>> their photos. I supposedly should be able to override this by setting 
>> fit-to-page=off. I supposed to be able to do this using the lpoptions 
>> command or specifying it on the lp command using "-o fit-to-page=off".
>>
>> Neither worked.
>>
>> If I use lpoptions as either my regular user or as root, it has no 
>> impact - using loptions -p <queue name> -o fit-to-page=off or omitting 
>> the -p <queue name> - all 4 variants fail. However I did note some odd 
>> behaviour setting the lpoptions. When I list the options, fit-to-page 
>> never shows. However if I look at the lpoptions file, the global one 
>> only contains the default queue name while the local user one appends 
>> "fit-to-page-off=true" to the default line.
>>
>> If I put the -o fit-to-page=off in the lp command, the jpeg file ends 
>> up printing over 4 pages, with about 1/4 of the image centred on each 
>> page - possibly full size but not what I expected or wanted or can use.
>>
>> I will also note that running "lpoptions -l" never shows the 
>> "fit-to-page" setting but it does confirm that my default paper size 
>> is "letter". Nor is there a "fit to page" setting through the CUPS 
>> printer management page (<servername>:631). However, I used to print 
>> unscaled documents to this printer (just not through Gwenview which 
>> doesn't have a print full size & crop option, which was why I 
>> originally started trying to use lp).
>>
>> Is there a way I can get this to work?
>>
> I found one way to make this work - I fired up a Windows 10 virtual 
> machine and printed from it. It's shameful that CUPS developers are 
> trying to force everyone to conform to their code while Microsoft still 
> accepts that people use older hardware. This is the opposite of what 
> Linux is about.
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Hi,

fully agree. Although I would have used a VM with a linux using elder 
cups version, maybe a tiny one... but's a shame anyway...

-- 
cu

jth